Grinding Gear Games’ CEO Chris Wilson has announced they are to postpone the open Beta for their ARPG until January.
For a few months GGG has been laying the foundations for an open Beta release of Path of Exile and have been aiming for a December launch. In an update  to the community on the POE site, they have decided to push the date back due to the holidays, which if you think about it, makes sense.
The new date is now 23 January 2013 and there is at least some good news, they will be increasing the pool of closed testers over the holidays. The statement from Wilson reads:
Path of Exile entered Closed Beta in August of 2011. Since then, we’ve continually added features, content, and fixed bugs as we moved towards Open Beta. A few months ago, we estimated that we would enter Open Beta in December 2012. Although we believe that we can have the build ready by then, we’ve decided that it’s too dangerous to launch the Open Beta over the Christmas period and Southern Hemisphere summer holidays when many of our staff will be away.
We have therefore decided to enter Open Beta on January 23, 2013, US time. The final character wipe and deployment of patch 0.10.0 (including Act Three) will occur then.
We understand that some community members may be disappointed with this news, and we’re very sorry that we have to adjust the date one final time. You’ve been patiently waiting for the Open Beta for over a year, and we want to make sure it’s just right. We strongly considered ignoring the dangers of a mid-December release, but in the end we decided that the extra safety would be worth the wait. We have only ever specified an exact date once before – when we entered Closed Beta on August 10, 2011 – and that deadline was met. We will be releasing the Open Beta on January 23, 2013 (US time).
In other positive POE news, they plan to ramp up the number of events over Christmas so if you’re on the test there should be enough to keep you busy.
